Are you losing your private medical practice because you
can’t earn enough to keep it open? If so, it’s because
you have never
had a formal business education!
“They” taught
you how
to practice medicine, but not how
to run a business
let alone a
profitable one.

We are talking about OFFENSIVE actions,
not Defensive actions.

You learn these simple business lessons and
advice
on
this site!

Article #64 - Apr. 2015

“Direct Mail (Response) Marketing”

This marketing method has proven to be the
easiest
and most productive method for
recruitment of new
patients second only to the effectiveness of having
an
elite physician
referral system in place.

No one should have to tell you that the flow of new patients joining your
medical practice is the life-blood of your medical practice. New patients
are the perpetual and only money source you have in private medical
practice.

Your focus on attracting new patients and maintaining
the loyalty of
your present patients are the only means
for you to afford to keep
your practice afloat, let alone to enable you to afford to meet all your
career objectives.

Regardless of your personal view about the
assimilation of money as a
primary goal and necessity of your medical practice, you really don’t have
another alternative if you intend to remain in private practice. So fix that
income factor in your mind right from the
start, today.

Doing that is no more difficult than to try to explain
to your spouse
that you are not making enough income from your practice to keep your
medical office open. Believe
me, I’ve been there and done that.

The key is to learn to work “on” your practice, not “in”
your practice.
Whatever happens to your practice and income depends on how well you can
work “on” your practice while practicing “in” your practice. The idea being
that you should spend enough time working on your practice to ensure that it
is managed in a profitable
manner and your decisions about what you do in
your practice are seasoned with diligence and
monetary knowledge.

Stupidity is eliminated with knowledge. If you are caught
in a snare of
regretful decision-making, you must always remember that more of the right
knowledge is required to escape… you already know that… but you
often think
that you can handle it yourself anyway… and
continue to lose.

Problems associated with marketing failure
The notion that marketing is just a matter of putting
a proposition or
offer in the face of enough people,
enough times, that the payoff will be
what you want to occur. This myth is perpetuated by those
who fail.

Marketing to be effective regardless of the method
used requires the
following maneuvers…

·
You must have a product or service that is highly desirable, easily
obtained, and affordable to most people. Physicians sell their services.
They better be good or no one will pay
for them.

·
You must find, create, influence, and attract the kind of customers who
have the highest potential to be interested in what you are selling and most
likely to buy from you.

Finding a targeted patient for your practice
should be more than
a scattered research
process. Almost all medical patients already have
a
doctor, so it means that you either need to get
to those who don’t have a
doctor of your
category (people moving into town) or patients who are ready
to change to a different doctor for some reason.

You can go to a “list broker”
in town that can define the exact patient you are looking for,
such as…

---earn over $60K per year
---own a boat or plane
---are male or female
---subscribe to certain magazines
---buy products like yours
---drive
race cars or are new in town

… and will furnish you a list of those people
along with their office or home address, phone
numbers, zip code, email address and more.
Cost varies from broker to broker but often will
cost you about $500 per 5,000 names you can
use only once.

·
No matter what method you use to reach
potential patients, it’s necessary to
communicate with them in a special way to let them know you are
available to provide them healthcare.

Patients may already be receiving such
letters, emails, etc. Whatever
you use to communicate, they must be persuaded to take some action. To
persuade patients, verbally or vocally, you must know how to do it. That
issue
is normally managed by copywriters who know what to say and how to say
it to persuade a patient to take action on
your offer.

·
You communicate with them because you want something from them. That is your
“offer”.

The offer you propose to a patient can be by phone,
written letter,
online, newsletters, etc. Most patients hate a “cold call”
to them that
requires a response at that moment. Most people prefer to receive a letter
describing the benefits and advantages of your offer… then make a decision
to take action you
have suggested.

The offer you make to a potential patient
must be worth their time to
even consider. It means that not only does your offer have to
stand out from
the rest, but also must have a value that the patient wants or needs or in
the near future.

Any offer being made must provide as many means
as possible for the
potential patient to reach your office… phone #, email address,
fax #, or
return post card. The fewer ways for them to use, the lower the response
rate is.

You should specify the one you prefer, but a
phone call to your office
is the best because they can be given the info they need to decide about
joining your practice and at the same time make the appointment. A phone
call to your office indicates a couple of important things…

1.
The
potential patient has already decided what they want
to do, usually that is to join your practice. The
only reason they might not is how well the office
staffer handles the call… provided positive info,
doesn’t rush the call, is very friendly and helpful
no matter how chaotic it
is that day.

The opposite response to the caller is immediate loss of a
new patient. If the story spreads, maybe a loss of even more.

2. Most potential patients prior to calling you have already sought advice
from family, friends, and neighbors about what kind person you are with
your patients. It’s rarely about your medical skills or knowledge, but usually
about how you treat patients and whether you can be trusted...
a marker of your reputation.

·
For physicians the usual and most effective method for contacting a
potential new patient is either email or postal mail piece. Of the
two
email is the least effective because patients are less likely to open
and read the message even though emails are a free means of
communicating
with prospects.

Direct mail is more expensive, but much
more effective for drawing in new
patients. As a reminder, direct mail is anything you send to someone that
is carried through the U.S. Postal Service and lands in their mailbox.

·
It’s one thing to send out a message but a whole different issue getting the
addressee to open the mail and read it.

Most email is never opened or read because
the subject line they see on
the screen does not contain the elements that persuades them that
it
might be something important, usable, or of value to them in some way.

Unless you create a subject line that draws curiosity,
potential for
benefits, or is interpreted
to be important to the recipient, it won’t be
opened. People rarely go back to read an email they saved to read later.

Direct mail has similar characteristics. When you pull a
pile of mail
out of your mailbox, you know that you will sort through it over the
wastebasket and select the mail piece you are interested in opening. So what
makes it
interesting or you curious about each of those. Over 50 percent of
mail is neither opened
nor read.

About 5 to 15% open rate is reasonable and expected. But
you want
everyone who gets your offer to open and read
your offer.

The more you do to make the envelope exciting, different from all the rest,
or somehow enticing the more chance you have to gain a new patient. When you
get around a 50% open rate
for your mail, you celebrate. Then you continue
to re-use a copy of that in all of your mail sent
out after that.

Just think about the mail and envelopes you select out of
your pile to
open and read and why you choose certain ones and not others. There
are many
tricks to the trade that induce
recipients to open mail that are well known
among marketers. You have to discover them by reading information about
that.

Advantages that direct mail has over email

Direct mail offers many more customizable options for the sender than
email offers. These options include
nearly all of the necessary things that
cause recipients to open the mail. Some common
examples are…

1.Lumpy mail…
almost everyone will open a piece of mail that has a lump of something
inside, even if
the rest of the information on the envelope is something
that would have led you to throw it away immediately otherwise.
Curiosity may have killed
the cat, but for people it
overcomes any
desire not
to open the mail.

2.Cockeyed
stamp…
a real stamp placed on the corner of the
envelope at a crooked angle means
that a person took the time to do it,
therefore it become a personal message, not a commercial one. When you
perceive it as personal you are more
likely to open it.

3.Handwritten
name and address…
it makes it
more personal than a typed or stamped address and creates the
feeling that it is a personal message,
not commercial.

4.Envelopes
include designs, logos, or colors…
makes one think of a holiday, birthday, or anniversary, all good emotions,
therefore, the mail should be opened. It differentiates the mail from others
that are plain white envelopes. Most people open these first.

5.Doodles…
hand-drawn messages, arrows, and
words that create urgency and increase
value, “only this once”, “price going up”, “only 4 left”, “lifetime value”,
“usable forever”, etc. Photos on envelopes
are not recommended. They use up space and don’t
help sell anything. The decoration or images on the stamps don’t help.

6.Envelope
size…
tends to make one believe that it contains more value, more information, and
more benefits. Often used to send certificates for
something simple with
your name on it.

7.Return
addresses…
Someleave it off, or put it on the back of the envelope because on
the front of
the envelope it instantly tells the recipient who
sent it and
you quickly dump it. Without a return address you may go ahead and open the
envelope just to find out who it’s from knowing you may read
it while you
have it open.

Occasionally only the street, city, zips are on
the front of the
envelope and no name mentioned. Most people don’t remember who is at what
address and end up opening the envelope to see
who sent it.

Although one can track both email and direct mail
and use the
statistics reported to judge the effectiveness of
your mail campaign and
make it even more effective,
direct mail has the advantage.

Email is usually
read and deleted or saved somewhere and never read later. Direct mail is a
piece of information you hold, feel, and touch and it connects with the mind
of the recipient better and continues in the conscious mind much longer.

Direct mail is apt to be saved in an easily visible
place and may be
left laying around in plain sight for days, all
the while catching the
person’s attention repeatedly.

Direct Mail marketing for Physicians
Most physicians in private medical practice today are
well aware that
they are practicing medicine in an environment where they either must learn
to market
their practice to remain solvent in their business or be forced
into an environment of employee-ship.

Physicians all tend to be independent thinkers; independent
decision-makers, independent medical care providers, and sure as hell don’t
want to give that up.

Medical patients are beginning to recognize the
consequences of what
government control of healthcare
is causing in healthcare. Patients see the
dire effects that result from restricted fees, increased frustration, and
lack of availability of healthcare when physicians are
being forced into
methods of medical practice that complicate their own medical care.

These circumstances create even more serious
effects on medical
doctors personally than the media cares to explore. It’s like a large group
of people standing breathlessly quiet while watching an out-of-control
house
fire burn it to the ground and no one can do
anything
about it.

That image remains in my mind because I watched
and felt that happen to
the home of a classmate of mine
in grade school when I was about 9 years
old.

Our very small town in western Pennsylvania of about 300 people living in
relative poverty under the WWII defensive efforts, no fire
department within
30 miles, volunteer firemen had to be called in from home
or work
in the
middle of the night, often too late to do anything about the fire, was how
we lived then. Thankfully, that night no one was injured.

Personal effects suffered by medical doctors that
result from a
constant and increasing demand on doctors
to comply are rarely discussed
outside of medical circles.

Their true disgust, disappointment, and
inability to
find a way to protect themselves and their practice from
the
political decisions being made today concerning healthcare is repressed
mentally. No one wants to give
up the ship that took so much to build.

So what can physicians do under these increasing demands?
The one thing that you can do for your own medical practice is learn
how to
market it. By simply reading a
book or two on “direct marketing” that I
recommend on
my website and you will pick up enough knowledge to do direct
marketing yourself. It would be far better to
delegate your most intelligent
and inspired employee to
do it all for you
if you have one of that
caliber.

You will have to the same knowledge about
direct marketing
because it is the only way for you to be sure it
is being done properly,
efficiently, and profitably while
you oversee the employees assigned to do
the
marketing work.

If you are not of the temperament to do it all yourself
and have no employee that qualifies, then hire a person who
is already
knowledgeable about marketing… pay
them well because it will
be worth it.
You will recognize
that by creating a method to measure
the success or
failure of
the campaign.This is the best thing you can do
today to at least get started in
a marketing effort. Your income depends on
more new patients, so any effort
for getting more of them
is smart. Your mental barrier to suddenly learn
about and do marketing will quickly be removed once you are in the groove of
learning and doing it.

Remember,your best resource for new
patients are other
doctors who refer them to you. So having a robust system for obtaining more
referred patients from other doctors is critical to do. (See my article on
my site about how to set up an elite doctor referral system.)

In marketing the hardest thing to do is to be
patient about seeing big
marketing responses. It may take 3 to 6 months to see the good results from
you marketing
efforts. You will need a setup to record
the data.

2.Decide how much money you have that you
are willing
to use in marketing your practice
monthly. Stick to your
budget
that you
decide on.

3.
Pick, choose, and buy the list-- choose
requirements to
focus on who you
want for
patients. Then buy a list of
10,000 to use.
Expect to get 3 to 5
new patients
from
that list.

4.
Record details of every response in a journal…
either on
your PC or
on paper. Many call for information only but
often call back for an
appointment. By a potential patient
responding means you legally can
communicate with them
using the info they gave you personally. It
means you
can
send them emails if you have
that address.

5.
Send out another 10,000 direct mail packets
to a
new
and different List of
potential patients,
ever 2 to 4 weeks
for the next year… put an
inexpensive gift
into each letter, like
letter
openers, book marks, key
chains, etc.

6.
Use the USPS bulk mailing discounts.

7.
Using postcards with your design and message
on them
is another approach to
your list. Don’t
send these out if
you are going to use real
letters.
If you are short of money,
use postcards instead of letters.

8.
If you have questions or need more help then
call me
at...
702-236-6337 --no charge for
the first call.

These are practical things to do that
help you for sure. Like
everything, it requires both money and your time to
do it properly.

"Professional
Probing"

Every medical
professional can relate to this scene whether in private practice or an
employee. The overwhelming aspect of postal or direct mail arriving in
your mailbox or your prospective patient's mailbox creates the same
emotions you
feel about it.
Your job is to do what you need to do to entice a prospective patient
to pick out your mail piece first and to open and read it. There are
many ways to draw potential patients to your letter or postcard, some of
which are mentioned above. There are ways to track the mail you send and
measure the rate of response
to your offer.
The greatest problem for most physicians is to be patient during the
process as the results unfold. Some people hold on to your message and
use it to contact you in a month
or so.
Many become more unhappy
with their own doctor before they finally respond to your offer and
intend to change doctors. Repeated mailings to a group of patients may
not be opened until they receive the third or fourth mailing.
People
procrastinate often on responding unless you present them with good
reasons to
contact you.

Article
#64-A

"How and why you should create a information newsletter for
your
medical practice"

By:jpalmer on:March
2nd, 2010--- GKIC Group

When I speak live I often refer the “magic of a
customer newsletter”
because a properly written newsletter can truly do magical things
for a business. One of the big reasons is that newsletters are not
perceived in the same manner as a postcard, a flyer
or other forms
of direct mail marketing.

When people receive these or anything else
that has
a sales and marketing feel to it, their guard goes up
and
they think, “Uh-oh. What are they trying to
sell me?”

Newsletters
tend to be informational, making them more welcomed when they are
received. As such they have higher readership than other forms of
advertising. People also tend to be more receptive to what you have
to say in your newsletter because newsletters aren’t meant to be
sales tools. Rather,
they are designed to be a resource.

In one of his No B.S. Marketing Letters, Dan Kennedy put it this
way, “People are conditioned to be less resistant to reading
information, such as articles, than they are advertising.”

Since
people are conditioned to be less resistant to reading information,
which is exactly what a
newsletter should be, most people read a
newsletter with their guards down.

A customer newsletter is
the strongest marketing
and business
building tool available — bar none.

Newsletters open doors. I now want to share with
you five secrets of
a great customer newsletter.

Secret # 1 – Tell them what else you do. Many customers
initially
engage with a business by purchasing a single product or service.
Over time
they may do repeat business, usually reordering the same
product or service, unaware of the other
products or services that
the company has to offer.

How many times have you heard a client I
didn’t
know you did that,” or, “I didn’t know you also sold that”?
Or, “I didn’t know you also sold that!” These
are all missed
opportunities to increase your revenue and profits. So, every month,
tell your customers
what else you do!

Secret #2 – Tell them what’s new. As business
owners, we are
always coming up with new products and services. A newsletter is a
great way to get the word out to people who already trust you and
find
value in what you sell. This can often be done quite
effectively by way of customer success stories and testimonials.

Secret #3 – It’s not about you. This is very
important. Your
newsletter is not about you or how many industry awards you have
won. Your newsletter should be about what’s important, interesting,
and entertaining to your customers and clients.

Every month, if you
inform, educate, and entertain them, with a big emphasis on
entertaining them,
they will look forward to your newsletter.

Secret #4 – Recognize the expensive real estate!
The back page of
your newsletter is not simply the mailing panel; it is the first
thing your readers will
see when the newsletter comes out of the
mailbox.

This is a great place to put important items that you want
readers to see. Also, never have a back page article with the
headline, “continued from …” as this
is boring and not very
appealing.

Secret #5 – Frequency trumps everything.
Frequency is more
important than the size of a newsletter, whether it’s color or black
and white, or even the quality of the content! Yes, you heard
me
right.

I would actually prefer a homemade cheesy looking
black/white newsletter published monthly to a professionally
designed newsletter done twice a year. You simply must have
frequency to build trust and strong relationships with your
customers
and prospects.

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Join Me here....

In Every Issue:

My desire is to always offer you the business and
marketing strategies that you will need if you ever wish
to reach your maximum potential in the practice of
medicine whether you are employed or in private practice.

My New Book

"The Wounded
Physician
Project"

The average medical doctor in the
US practices medicine
for 12,617 days and leaves a million dollars on the table during
that time.

They never are able recognize that it was available to them during all
those
years because they lack a business education.

This book is unique because no other
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provided
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Secondly, the reader will discover
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physicians. Today, most physicians struggle
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reliability on their own business ignorance.

The contents discuss all the benefits and advantages of business knowledge,
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You probably won't get much benefit
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The success principles of all businesses are the same, but the management
of those business strategies have to match the passions, objectives, and
diligence capabilities of
each physician.

The content is meant not only to inspire
physicians to
gain business knowledge, but also to get a very clear understanding about
how
fragile their medical career is to present day economic, political, and
social threats.

The ultimate goal of
all medical
doctors should be to use their business knowledge as a offensive weapon
against predators, both economic and governmental, to survive and grow using
the business tools I continue to throw at you. It's the only offensive force
that physicians have to use to remain in private practice.

I truly believe this is
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way through.

Thank you

Profitable Practice Tips

1.
Create you first physician referral program by following my articles--
#13-32-33

2. "Doc
Fix"--
pending bill in congress to ensure that physicians and HC providers have a
more fixed remuneration of Medicare fees... the bill considers it's fair to
offer doc's a 0.5% increase annually
through 2019.

I
don't think that it will convince any physician in private practice that
they should go back to treating Medical patients again.

Borderless Humor

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is
not putting it in
a fruit salad."

---paraprosdokian thoughts

Inspiration Time

"Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains
after your bad habits are subtracted from your
good ones."
---Ben Franklin

Views I Only Share With My Friends--

What my medical career taught me...
Click Here...
and how it can help you manage your medical practice
business at the highest level of expertise.

Facts And Stats
You Should Know

1. The
tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot
heal itself.

2.
Only 1% of people know this:

All money transactions in the USA by 2017 will be digital in origin. The
mandate has been signed by president Obama and signed into already by most
of the major banks, large retail stores, and many others.

Wallets and purses will become extinct. NFC is a digital chip already in the
iPhone 6 and has been in use for many years that we didn't know about in
many other ways.

Wave the iPhone over the "reader" and the transaction is
complete--Starbucks has it already, you may have already paid already using
it.

Insist on and help your kids to become assets...
When you want to understandwhat your modern day kids are
capable of and
have the ability to do, regarding starting a
business of their own, then hit the link below and give
yourself a dose
of inspirational enlightenment...

Teach your kids these things……
--business
principles,
--money-management,--creative thinking,--entrepreneurship,--self-discipline,--integrity,--decision making,--independence,--kindness,--respect,--truthfulness,--humility,--goal setting,--faith in God,
and
the power of money

New Important
Notices

Protectyour practice using the strategies in this
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